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River of Haitians march to stop the attacks on President Aristide and the Lavalas movement
January 10, 2013
On Jan. 9, MASSIVE demonstrations throughout Haiti supported former President Aristide after he was summoned to court on frivolous charges seen as political persecution. People say that putting Aristide on trial is the same as putting the Haitian masses on trial and that the charges are meant to divert attention from the third earthquake anniversary and the theft of billions in aid. Speak out against the Red Cross for building a luxury hotel with aid funds. Rally Friday, Jan. 11, 4:30-5:30 p.m., outside Red Cross headquarters, 3901 Broadway, near MacArthur BART, Oakland.
Protest Red Cross theft of Haitian relief on third earthquake anniversary
January 4, 2013
Tens of thousands of people have been demonstrating in Haiti for months. Three years after the earthquake, despite billions donated by a generous public, hundreds of thousands of people are still struggling to survive in tent cities, surrounded by rubble. They are still without clean water or food security or income, still fighting the cholera imported by U.N. troops.
Sandy aftermath: Humanitarian crisis in Coney Island projects
November 13, 2012
The situation in public housing projects in Coney Island, Brooklyn remains a “humanitarian crisis” in which the government and the Red Cross have been nearly completely absent, according to Eric Moed, a volunteer aid worker with Occupy Sandy. The projects in Coney Island remain without power and often without water and necessities in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
For public housing residents after Sandy, ‘a slow-motion Katrina’
November 10, 2012
Ask anyone living in Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens or Park Slope earlier this week, and they would tell you that they have power, hot water and wi-fi. In fact, most of the $1 million-plus townhouses and local businesses in Brooklyn’s wealthier neighborhoods never lost any basic necessities, even during the worst of the storm. But the Gowanus Houses, a low-income public housing complex owned and operated by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which falls almost at the intersection of those three neighborhoods, is an exception.
The UN’s cholera epidemic in Haiti
August 26, 2012
More than 70 percent of Haitians responding to a recent poll said they wanted MINUSTAH to leave within a year. The U.N. can use the money currently wasted on this military force to rid the country of cholera. Then, at least, they will have cleaned up one of their biggest crimes in the country.
1,600 Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike since April 17
May 7, 2012
Over 1,600 Palestinian prisoners are currently engaged in a steadfast and open-ended hunger strike that launched on April 17, 2012, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. They are demanding an end to solitary confinement; access to family visits for all prisoners; and access to education and media. And they are demanding international solidarity.
Report from Haiti: Where’s the money?
December 28, 2011
Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5-gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Women carry 5-gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street.
Western funded genocide: Ethiopia and the Ogaden
July 11, 2011
Ethiopian troops are in the oil rich, contested Sudanese Abyei region in accordance with a new U.N. Security Council resolution invoking sovereign nations’ “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from genocide and mass atrocities if their own governments aren’t protecting them. But what about Ethiopia’s own genocide in the Ogaden Basin that the West is funding?
WikiLeaks: Haiti’s elite tried to turn the police into a private army
July 1, 2011
Leading members of Haiti’s bourgeoisie tried to turn the Haitian police force into their own private army, according to a secret U.S. Embassy cable provided to Haïti Liberté by the media organization WikiLeaks.
Cynthia McKinney’s truth dispatches from Libya: Days 1-3
June 5, 2011
While thousands of mostly Black migrant workers fleeing the rebels’ anti-Black racism are trapped in refugee camps on the Tunisian border, aid workers lounge in tourist hotels, Tripoli endures nightly bombings and the DIGNITY Delegation visits the Qaddafis’ home hit on April 30 by bunker buster bombs fired from a U.S. warplane. Their son Seif and three small grandchildren were killed in the airstrike aimed at Col. Qaddafi, who was in the yard tending to animals in the children’s petting zoo.
Broadway San Jose’s ‘The Color Purple’ through Nov. 28
November 26, 2010
It’s been 25 years since the film version of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” opened to much controversy. Despite the controversy, the story is one that is still read, watched and celebrated in many forms. The San Jose production of the musical is fantastic! This is the final weekend.
Flooding intensifies cholera outbreak in Haiti
November 8, 2010
The threat of the recent cholera outbreak in Haiti has been intensified by Hurricane Tomas. The already bad sanitary conditions combined with the flooding from the hurricane is expected to cause the infection rate to jump.
Cholera epidemic: Foul drinking water killing Haitians
October 25, 2010
The cholera epidemic has killed 250 Haitians and over 3,000 more are infected and may die. This cholera is caused by drinking dirty, toxic water. According to Haiti’s health minister, cholera “can kill in three hours because once the diarrhea starts it doesn’t stop.”
Rev. Jeremiah Wright: ‘Let’s tell the truth about Haiti’
October 9, 2010
“If you want to help Haiti, let’s start by telling the truth, OK? The truth is that on April 7, 2003, President Aristide, a democratically elected president on the side of the poor, called together a Restitution Commission which determined that France owed Haiti $21 billion. And within weeks, France and the United States told Aristide it was time for him to go. Step aside, step down, resign or be killed.”
Sean Penn and Wyclef Jean: Hollywood, hip hop and Haiti
August 10, 2010
Two things we know for sure: Hollywood and hip hop get media attention. And for Haiti, that translates into big media hype for actor Sean Penn and rapper-turned-presidential candidate, Wyclef Jean. How may we use this media glare to help the 2 million Haitians made homeless by the earthquake?
Haiti: Hanging with Rea Dol at the site of the future Sopudep School
May 18, 2010
Rea Dol and Dodo were at the airport with a sign with my name when I arrived. We then headed to the building site, where a wall is going up around the perimeter. Rea is the principal of SOPUDEP School in Port au Prince, founded as part of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s National Literacy Project. She’s building a new school to replace the one that was damaged in the earthquake.
The plantation called Haiti: Feudal pillage masking as humanitarian aid
May 6, 2010
The champagne bottles were popping at the U.N. for the pledging session’s success – $5 billion, $10 billion pledged for the future. Whose future? What Haitians in Haiti need is a hoe, a tractor, some lifting equipment, so they might not have to use their bare hands to dig out the corpses still under the rubble over three months after the earthquake. Just a hoe, a tractor – we’ll do the work.
Haiti: ‘Disaster capitalism on steroids’
March 17, 2010
“Two months after the devastating earthquake, the situation in Haiti is downright criminal,” says Robert Roth. According to the spokesperson for the activist network Haiti Action Committee, major Western players such as the U.S. are more interested in defending their own geopolitical interests in Haiti than truly helping the hard hit Caribbean country.
U.S. brags Haiti response is a ‘model’ while more than a million remain homeless in Haiti
February 14, 2010
Despite the fact that over a million people remained homeless in Haiti one month after the earthquake, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Ken Merten is quoted at a State Department briefing on Feb. 12, saying: “In terms of humanitarian aid delivery … frankly, it’s working really well. And I believe that this will be something that people will be able to look back on in the future as a model for how we’ve been able to sort ourselves out as donors on the ground and responding to an earthquake.”
Haiti! … in one form or another
February 13, 2010
They shoot us, then display us as looters. / Then they bring in the U.N. and the rest of the U.S. friends, / Blackwater forces who now go under the new name Xe, / Who, like a fatal disease, once they get in, they don’t / Never plan on leaving. … / Haiti! The land of my brotherman … and sister woman, / The ones that kicked Napolean’s ass, / The land of sugar cane and Africans, / The land in which the enslaved revolt.